Disclaimer: I might be just as good at procrastination as Russell T. Davies is, but I'm not him. Sorry.

Author's Note: And this, my friends, is the end. Okay, there are two epilogues, but this is the last real chapter. I tried to explain most things finally; keep in mind that most of the plot and explanation came once I sat down to write this. Even to the end, I had no idea where this was going. I don't think that's a bad thing, though. I got to learn what would happen around when you readers learned. Anything that doesn't make sense will hopefully be explained in the epilogues; please ask questions so I know what I should mention and solve!

Note: Chapter 14 follows good ol' Rory for the last time. We started with Rory, we officially end with Rory.

"You can't do anything to stop me."

"And what are we supposed to stop? You said it: you're Hollow, you don't really exist. You're just words and a bit of anomaly that makes it corporeal. What could you possibly do?"

"This," he said simply, and pulled the screen up a centimeter. The cacophony started again, as suddenly as it had the last time, only now the melody was too strong, it hurt, it wasn't beautiful...Rose clutched her ears and sank to the floor, she could feel Rory and Amy doing the same, but she couldn't see, her eyes were clenched shut as if that would help distill the madness of the sound...

And then there was silence.

After the crazed assortment of noise, the silence was louder than noise could have been.

Rory looked up.

Hollow was standing still, his hands still on the screen. He looked confused. Rory was too, as a matter of fact.

He tried to speak, but couldn't. Maybe it was because of something in the room, something to do with the Noise beforehand, but it might have been a simple unwillingness to break the Silence that now filled the entire world.

The Doctor was standing, twiddling with his sonic screwdriver, flipping it in his hands. He didn't look up.

The end of the sonic screwdriver was glowing, although it didn't make the standard buzzing sound.

Slowly, Rory stood himself up, then helped his wife and Rose to their feet. They both looked shaken, but resolute-determined to understand. Rory didn't think he really wanted to understand; he wanted out of there.

Then something broke the silence.

"What...is...the...meaning...of...this?" The Voices, in their dark glory, had meandered into the room. A baby's squeal, a woman's terrified shout, a whisper...

The Doctor didn't look up. "You've gone too far. You know that, don't you?" he said, quietly, still fiddling with his screwdriver.

"We...have...done...nothing...wrong...we...have...m erely...taken...what...was...ours..."

"But it wasn't yours!" the Time Lord shouted. The shout seemed to make the monster shrink back for a moment, seemed to make the room seem even more quiet than it was before. His voice quieted. "They weren't yours to take, were they?"

"Doctor?" Rose was looking at the Voices, an odd expression on her face, as if she understood something that she hadn't before. "Doctor, did it...it stole those voices, didn't it? From people?"

He didn't answer; instead, he caught his screwdriver and clenched it tightly. That was answer enough.

"How...how can it do that?" Rory asked, finding his voice at last. "How can you steal voices?"

"We...didn't...steal..." A young man's; a grunting worker's; an enraged woman's. "We...took...what...was...ours..."

"Weren't you listening? Or are you only voices and not capable of comprehending me?" The Doctor's voice grew louder. "They weren't yours to take."

Amy glared at the still man in front of the screen, then at the blackness writhing in the doorway. "Doctor. Explain. Now."

"He-" The Doctor pointed at Hollow, "-he isn't a human. He isn't even real. Not anymore. He's hollow; he's just a shell with a perception filter."

"What's inside the shell, then?" Rose questioned.

"An idea. A stupid little concept that humans and Slitheens and Daleks and every race that ever existed thinks of at one point-Silence. Peace and quiet."

Rory would argue that, if what he had heard about Daleks was true, they didn't exactly take to peace, but right then wasn't the time for smart remarks. "So...the idea...what, grew? Became sentient?" The Doctor nodded; Rory blinked. "How is that possible?"

"Oh, Rory the Roman, anything's possible. Psychic technology, glitched nanobots, the Reapers of Quison...there are a hundred ways it could become real." The Doctor turned off his screwdriver for a moment; Hollow started to raise an arm. The Doctor flicked it on again, and the man...the idea?...stopped, still as before. "Of course, this isn't the true ideal. This is a mistake."

"We...are...not...a...mistake...we...were...called. ..into...being...we...were...the...dream...of...sl eepless...nights...for...quiet...for...silence..." The last word was spoken by a soothing male.

"But people don't really want silence. No. No creature does. It's too frightening, isn't it?" The Doctor finally looked up, at the Voices. "Anything can happen in the stillness. Those born deaf know no other life, they get by just fine, they ought to be commended, but the average man on the street? He might say he's scared of nothing, or maybe of lightning or wars, but he's lying. What's more terrifying than silence, darkness, and the unknown?"

"We..."

Amy cut it off before it got started again. "So, what, it just takes people's voices?"

"It takes any sound. Rory, remember that room we were put in, when we were captured?"

Rory blinked and nodded. "Yeah...with that pedestal thing..."

"That 'pedestal thing' was a generator. Fancy design, that, meant to be soothing for the victim, meant to draw them over."

The Voices sighed as a hundred different people. "We...collect...sounds...we...draw...the...curious. ..in...and...we...take...what...is...ours."

"To achieve the Silence," the Doctor said, glaring at the creature, "it needs to take sound away. To block light, you simply cover your eyes. Smell? Plug your nose. But hearing? Even if you cover your ears, something always leaks through. So you wanted to go for the source, didn't you?"

"But...that's impossible. Sound never stops," Rose muttered. "What happened to the people taken here?"

"They...were...no...longer...necessary..."

"But...this still doesn't make sense," Rory said. "Why is there both Hollow and this thing? And why collect voices and sounds when the rest of the world continues to make noise?"

"There are two beings, Rory, because the concept was too big. Hollow here is empty, hollow, quite literally...he was silent, but he's only one thing that was silent. The rest of the world wasn't. So he needed Voices to collect for him. The perception filter gives him a voice to communicate, but it isn't his voice; it's someone else's.

"And, as for the second question, the concept is flawed. It's childish, thinking silence will solve a problem, so it collects sounds like a child collects toys and shiny objects. And, because the concept is flawed, glitched, even, it can't realize that it isn't doing anything but harm."

That made sense, in a strange, messed-up way. But that usually was how things worked with the Doctor: Rory himself had been erased from existence only to come back as a Roman Centurion. He still wasn't entirely sure how that had worked out.

"We...will...take...your...voices...as...well...we ...brought...you...four...here...to...collect..."

"Then why aren't we collected yet?" It was Amy who asked this. She had crossed her arms, and was taking turns glaring at the black creature and at Hollow.

"He...is...interfering...he...must...be...stopped. ..must...be...collected..."

The Doctor smiled a cheeky grin. "Doctor...your screwdriver...I thought it was out of power..." Rory said, half to himself, finally realizing that it really was glowing like it normally did.

"It's charging right now. I found a power switch when I was searching the room and I quickly changed some wires so the energy would go to this good ol' thing. That's why the cacophony stopped."

"So...so long as this is charging, Hollow can't do anything?" Rose asked, a small grin on her face.

"But what about that creep over there?" Amy asked, pointing.

The Voices, waving its dark tentacles around, was moving toward them, slowly but surely.

"Er...well, I have one good idea..." the Doctor muttered. "On the count of three...one...two...three!"

And the four of them started running. Rory dodged past the Voices; he pulled his wife away just as a tentacle reached for her. Rose vaulted over one of the limbs, leaping through the door, the Doctor close behind her.

They ran through the hallway; when they reached the open floor they had come up through, the Doctor jumped down, so the rest followed suit.

"What are we doing?!" Amy shouted as they started to run in the direction they had come, through the assortment of still-open doors.

"We're running. I thought that was obvious, Pond."

"Doctor." Amy gave him a chiding frown.

"Okay, okay. I didn't just charge the sonic when we were up there. I stopped the flow of ideas from reaching those two. Stopped the mental support from empowering them."

A crash from behind. Even though Rory couldn't see through the doorways they had passed-they were still pitch black-he could guess that the Voices were chasing them now. It was the only thing that seemed to make sound through the doors.

"What will happen?" Rose asked.

"With any luck, this world will start unraveling. I just don't want us to be inside it when that process gets too far." The Doctor stopped running, looking around. There were two open doors in the room they had just entered. He ran a hand through his hair. "This is cheating!"

"Wait!" Amy cried. "This way!" She pointed to the ground, where a little red arrow pointed through one of the doors.

"Is that your lipstick?" Rory asked, making a face at his wife.

She gave him a crazed look. "It's hasn't been my best day, okay?"

However, the Doctor went and hugged her quickly. "Good job, Pond!" With a smile, he led the way through the door, and the three companions followed.

Rory had to admire his wife. She had left an easy-to-follow train. With her lipstick. Rory made a mental note to buy her a new stick of it once they got back to England. Within ten minutes, they were back at the room that Amy said they had been in when the monster had captured Rory and the Doctor.

The problem was, now they had no more of a trail to follow to get out of the building. There were three wallways open: the one they had just entered through, the one the monster had taken them through, and the one the three of them had originally come through when they had first explored the room.

And they couldn't remember which door through which they had first come.

And the creature was still following them. It was a distance away, but nevertheless it was coming.

It was Rose that realized it. It was she who mentioned that the entrance to the outpost itself was north, and that therefore they would have to go north eventually to get out. The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to find the direction; north was the only door that wasn't open.

"Then we go east," Rose said simply. "South is where the monster took you, and it won't cross paths, I shouldn't think. And we came in through the west wall."

The Doctor gave a grin at the logic and off they went.

And, before Rory could really understand it, they had found their way outside.

Sunlight. Rory never thought he'd miss the sun as much as he did. At least when he had been guarding the Pandorica, there had been windows, and he had stepped outside for brief intervals to get some air.

Amy through her arms around him, smiling. "I never thought we'd get out of there!"

"What, you doubted me? Shame, Pond," the Doctor said, grinning. Amy rolled her eyes before enveloping him in a hug as well.

Behind the three of them, Rose cleared her throat. "Well...I'd better get going, then."

The Doctor looked at her sadly. "It was...nice to see you again. How are things...there?"

She smiled in return. "Fine. John's adjusting well, Tony's always asking him questions. Mum and Dad have been travelling around the country, and John and I are planning to go abroad soon."

"A vacation?"

She gave him a wry smile. "More like chasing down aliens around the world. We're kept busy with Torchwood."

"Are...are you and him..."

She smiled slightly. Then, without warning, she hugged him tightly. "Thank you, Doctor. Even if you aren't the one I remember."

He was stiff for a moment before hugging her back. "Rose Tyler. You always turn up, don't you?"

"Would you have it any other way?"

The Doctor just gave a cheeky grin. "You'd better get going. Say hi to everyone for me."

"Will do," Rose responded.

And, still hugging the Doctor, she disappeared from view.

"...Doctor? Are you...are you okay?" Amy asked gently.

Standing up straight, he flashed her a small grin. "Just dandy." He looked around. "We'd better get going. We're not out of the woods yet. Literally."

As they ran back to the Tardis, things were changing. Sounds started coming from all directions, random sounds; every now and then they heard footsteps from behind, but that only made them run all the faster.

And the world was dismantling. Rory could see that now; the tops of the trees were turning a faded grey color, the horizon was darkening, the sun wasn't casting as much light as it once had. Eventually the footsteps stopped, disappeared as well, but that only made the Doctor push them harder.

When they reached the Tardis, the sky was almost black.

They entered. The Doctor pressed a few buttons. The Tardis took to flying.

"It's done now, right?" Amy asked, holding onto a railing as the time machine jolted through time and space. "That world is gone?"

The Doctor fiddled with a few switches, then looked at his screen. "Yep. Of course, it might appear again; people have such silly thoughts, wanting pure and utter silence...but this incarnation of the idea is gone."

"Doctor, you've never wished for silence before?" Rory asked, innocently.

The Doctor looked at him. "Oh, no. I've wished for it more than anyone else, I should imagine."

"Where did Rose go?"

"Back to her own world. She must have been called through a rift; it should be closed now." He didn't appear to want to talk about it any more.

"Doctor?" Amy asked.

He looked up from the console.

"Rio?"

He grinned. "Might as well."